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EDGAR  POE  AND  HIS  CRITICS. 


Edgar  Allan  Poe, 

From  a  Daguerreotype  taken  for  Sarah  Helen  Whitman 


EDGAR   POE 


AND   HIS   CRITICS. 


BY 

SARAH    HELEN  WHITMAN. 


SECOND  EDITION. 


PROVIDENCE,  R.I.  : 
TIBBITTS     AND     PRESTON. 

1885. 


Copyright,  188-), 
By  CHARLOTTE   F.    DAILEY  and   MAUD  CHACE. 


FI.ECTKOTVPF.D   ANU   I'KIN'TRD 

BY  RAM),  a\i;ky,  and  company, 

IIOSTOX,    MARS. 


"  Wild  words  wander  here  and  there  ; 
God's  great  gift  of  speech  abused 
Makes  thy  memory  confused." 


"  We  cannot  see  thy  features  right : 
They  mix  with  hollow  masks  of  night." 

Tennyson. 


"  With  tliese  keys  we  may  partially  unlock  the  mystery."  —  Foe's 
AIar''-:Halia. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  FIRST  EDITION. 


Dr.  Griswold's  Memoir  of  Edgar  Poe  has  been 
extensively  read  and  circulated ;  its  perverted  facts 
and  baseless  assumptions  have  been  adopted  into 
every  subsequent  memoir  and  notice  of  the  poet,  and 
have  been  translated  into  many  languages.  For  ten 
years  this  great  wrong  to  the  dead  has  passed  unchal- 
lenged and  unrebuked. 

It  has  been  assumed  by  a  recent  English  critic  that 
"  Edgar  Poe  had  no  friends."  As  an  index  to  a  more 
ecjuitable  and  intelligible  theory  of  the  idiosyncrasies 
of  his  life,  and  as  an  earnest  protest  against  the  spirit 
of  Dr.  Griswold's  unjust  memoir,  these  pages  are  sub- 
mitted to  his  more  candid  readers  and  critics  by 

ONE   OF   HIS    FRIENDS. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


If  an  introduction  were  needed  to  Mrs.  Whitman's 
"  Edgar  Poe  and  his  Critics,"  no  better  words  could 
be  found  than  the  following  tribute  of  George  William 
Curtis,  originally  published  in  "Harper's  Weekly"  in 
18O0:  — 

"In  reading  the  exquisitely  tender,  subtle,  sympa- 
thetic, and  profoundly  appreciative  sketch  of  Edgar  Poe, 
which  has  just  been  issued  under  this  title,  it  is  impos- 
sible not  to  remember  the  brave  woman's  arm  thrust 
through  the  slide  to  serve  as  a  bolt  against  the  enemy. 
.  .  .  The  author,  with  an  inexpressible  grace,  reserve, 
and  tender,  heroic  charity,  having  a  right  which  no  other 
person  has  to  speak,  tells,  in  a  simple,  transparent,  and 
quiet  strain,  what  she  thinks  of  his  career  and  genius. 
.  .  .  In  the  delicate  reticence  of  the  book,  in  its  tone 
of  inward  music,  —  as  if  tlie  singer  were  humming  a 
melody  benecUli   the  song  she  sings,  —  there  is  a  [)ensivc 

9 


lO  PREFACE. 

and  peculiar  charm.  But  it  is  not  a  eulogy :  it  is  a 
criticism  which  is  profound  by  the  force  of  sympathy, 
and  vigorous  by  its  clear  comprehension." 


The  life  and  genius  of  Edgar  Poe  have  created  a 
special  literature  of  their  own.  "  Edgar  Poe  and  his 
Critics  "  was  the  earliest  book  to  vindicate  Poe  from 
the  malice  of  his  enemies,  and  to  unveil  something 
of  the  mystery  of  his  life.  It  was  the  tribute  of  a 
poet  to  a  poet,  and  of  a  woman  to  the  character  of 
a  man  to  whom  she  was  betrothed,  and  from  whom 
she  was  strangely  separated  in  the  last  year  of  his 
life.  ''  Edgar  Poe  and  his  Critics "  is  an  essential 
part  of  the  literature  which,  in  England,  France,  and 
America,  irradiates  the  name  of  Poe. 

Mrs.  Whitman's  poems,'  the  companion  volume  to 
"  Edgar  Poe  and  his  Critics,"  contains  a  striking 
group  of  poems  relating  to  Poe,  of  much  biograph- 
ical value.  They  are  entitled  "  Remembered  Music," 
"  Our  Island  of  Dreams,"  "  The  last  Flowers,"  "  Song," 
"  Withered  Flowers,"  "  The  Phantom  Voice,"  "  Arc- 
turus  in  October,"  "  Resurgemus,"  "  Arcturus  in 
April,"    "  The    Portrait,"    and    the    "  Six    Sonnets    to 

'  Poems  by  Sarah  Helen  Whitman.  Providence.  Second  edi- 
tion.    Tibbitts  and  Preston. 


PREFACE.  II 

,"  which  are  rivalled  in   passionate   beauty  only 

by  Mrs.  Browning's  "  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese." 

"  Edgar  Poe  and  his  Critics  "  has  been  some  time 
out  of  print.  The  present  edition  is  published  to 
meet  the  demand  of  friends  and  admirers  of  Edgar 
Poe  and  of  Sarah  Helen  Whitman. 

W.   F.   C. 


EDGAR  POE  AND  HIS  CRITICS. 


The  author  of  the  "  Original  Memoir "  pre- 
fixed to  the  volume  of  Poe's  "Illustrated  Poems," 
recently  published  by  Redfield,  says,  "  Of  all 
the  poets  whose  lives  have  been  a  puzzle  and 
a  mystery  to  the  world,  there  is  not  one  more 
difficult  to  be  understood  than  Edgar  Allan 
Poe."  The  Rev.  George  Gilfillan,  in  his  very 
imaginative  portraiture  of  the  poet,  admits  that 
the  moral  anatomists  who  have  met  and  won- 
dered over  his  life,  have  given  up  all  attempts 
at  dissection  and  diagnosis,  turning  away  with 
the  solemnly  whispered  warning  to  the  world, 
and  especially  to  its  more  brilliant  and  gifted 
intellects,  "  Beware  !  " 

lie  confesses  that  a  history  so  strange  as  that 
of  lulgar  Poe  should  prompt  us  to  new  and  more 
searching  methods  of  critical  as  well  as  moral 
analysis.  But  before  such  analysis  can  be  insti- 
tuted, we  must  have  fuller,  more  dispassionate, 


14  EDGAR  POE  AND  HIS  CRITICS. 

and  more  authentic  records  of  the  phenomena 
to  be  analyzed.  The  well  written  but  very  brief 
memoir  prefixed  to  the  "  Illustrated  Poems," 
and  the  various  sketches  that  have  from  time 
to  time  appeared  in  the  French  and  English 
periodicals,  are  all  based  on  the  narrative  of  Dr. 
Griswold,  a  narrative  notoriously  deficient  in 
the  great  essentials  of  candor  and  authenticity. 
"  It  is  a  rare  accomplishment,"  says  one  of  our 
most  original  writers,  "  to  hear  a  story  as  it  is 
told,  still  rarer  to  remember  it  as  heard,  and 
rarest  of  all  to  tell  it  as  it  is  remembered." 

If  Dr.  Griswold's  "  Memoir  of  Edgar  Poe " 
betrays  the  want  of  any  or  all  of  these  ac- 
complishments, if  its  remorseless  violations  of 
the  trust  confided  to  him  are  such  as  to  make 
the  unhallowed  act  of  Trelawney  towards  the 
enshrouded  form  of  the  dead  Byron  seem  guilt- 
less in  comparison,  we  must,  nevertheless, 
endeavor  to  remember  that  the  memorialist  him- 
self now  claims  from  us  that  tender  grace  of 
charity  that  he  was  unwilling,  or  unable,  to 
accord  to  the  man  who  trusted  him  as  a  friend. 

It  is  not  our  purpose  at  present  specially  to 
review  Dr.  Griswold's  numerous  misrepresenta- 
tions and  misstatements.  Some  of  the  more 
injurious  of  these  anecdotes  were  disproved, 
during  the  life  of  Dr.  Griswold,  in  "The  New- 


EDGAR  POE  AND  HIS  CRITICS.  1 5 

York  Tribune "  and  other  leading  journals, 
without  eliciting  from  him  any  public  statement 
in  explanation  or  apology.  Quite  recently  we 
have  had,  through  the  columns  of  "  The  Home 
Journal,"  the  refutation  of  another  calumnious 
story,  which  for  ten  years  has  been  going  the 
rounds  of  the  English  and  American  period- 
icals. 

We  have  authority  for  stating  that  many  of 
the  disgraceful  anecdotes  so  industriously  col- 
lected by  Dr.  Griswold  are  utterly  fabulous, 
while  others  are  perversions  of  the  truth,  more 
injurious  in  their  effects  than  unmitigated 
fiction.  But,  as  we  have  said,  it  is  not  our 
purpose  at  present  to  revert  to  these.  We 
propose  simply  to  point  out  some  unfounded 
critical  estimates  which  have  obtained  currency 
among  readers  who  have  but  a  partial  acquaint- 
ance with  Mr.  Poe's  more  imaginative  writings, 
and  to  record  our  own  impressions  of  the  char- 
acter and  genius  of  the  poet,  as  derived  from 
personal  observation,  and  from  the  testimony 
of  those  who  knew  him.  Although  he  had 
been  connected  with  some  of  the  leading  mag- 
azines of  the  day,  and  had  edited  for  a  time, 
with  great  ability,  several  successful  periodicals, 
Mr.  Poe's  literary  reputation  at  the  North  had 
been  comparatively  limited  until  his  removal  to 


1 6  EDGAR  FOE  AND   IHS  CRITICS. 

New  York,  in  the  autumn  of  1847,  when  he 
became  personally  known  to  a  large  circle  of 
authors  and  literary  people,  whose  interest  in 
his  writings  was  manifestly  enhanced  by  the 
perplexing  anomalies  of  his  character,  and  by 
the  singular  magnetism  of  his  presence.  One 
who  knew  him  at  this  period  of  his  life  says, 
"  Every  thing  about  him  distinguished  him  as 
a  man  of  mark  :  his  countenance,  person,  and 
gait  were  alike  characteristic.  His  features 
were  regular,  and  decidedly  handsome.  His 
complexion  was  clear  and  dark ;  the  color  of 
his  fine  eyes  seemingly  a  dark  gray,  but,  on 
closer  inspection,  they  were  seen  to  be  of  that 
neutral  violet  tint  which  is  so  difficult  to  define. 
His  forehead  was,  without  exception,  the  finest, 
in  proportion  and  expression,  that  we  have  ever 
seen.  The  perceptive  organs  were  not  deficient, 
but  seemed  pressed  out  of  the  way  by  causality, 
comparison,  and  constructiveness.  Close  to 
these  rose  the  proud  arches  of  ideality.  The 
coronal  region  was  very  imperfect,  wanting  in 
reverence  and  conscientiousness,  and  presenting 
a  key  to  many  of  his  literary  characteristics. 
The  ideas  of  right  and  wrong  are  as  feeble  in 
his  chains  of  thought  as  in  the  literature  of 
ancient  Greece."  We  quote  this  description 
for  its  general  fidelity.     Its  estimate  of  literary 


EDGAR  FOE  AND   HIS  CRITICS.  1 7 

characteristics,   conveyed    in   the   closing   sen- 
tence, we  shall  revert  to  in  another  place. 

The  engraved  portraits  of  Mr.  Poe  have  very- 
little  individuality:  that  prefixed  to  the  volumes 
edited  by  Dr.  Griswold  suggests,  at  first  view, 
something  of  the  general  contour  of  his  face, 
but  is  utterly  void  of  character  and  expression  ; 
it  has  no  sub-surface.  The  original  painting, 
now  in  possession  of  the  New-York  Historical 
Society,  has  the  same  cold,  automatic  look  that 
makes  the  engraving  so  valueless  as  a  portrait 
to  those  who  remember  the  unmatched  glory  of 
his  face  when  roused  from  its  habitually  intro- 
verted and  abstracted  look  by  some  theme  or 
profound  emotion.  Perhaps  from  its  peculiarly 
changeful  and  translucent  character,  any  ade- 
quate transmission  of  its  variable  and  subtle 
moods  was  impossible.  By  writers  personally 
unacquainted  with  Mr.  Poe,  this  engraving  has 
often  been  favorably  noticed.  Mr.  Hannay,  in 
a  memoir  prefixed  to  the  first  London  edition 
of  Poc's  "  Poems,"  calls  it  an  interesting  and 
characteristic  portrait,  "a  fine,  thoughtful  face, 
with  lineaments  of  delicacy,  such  as  belong 
only  to  genius  or  high  blood, — the  forehead 
grand  and  pale  ;  the  eye  dark,  and  gleaming 
with  sensibility  and  soul  ;  a  face  to  inspire  men 
with  interest  and  curiosity." 


1 8  EDGAR  FOE  AND   HIS  CRITICS. 

There  is  a  quiet  drawing-room  in Street, 

New  York,  a  sort  of  fragrant  and  delicious 
"  clover-nook  "  in  the  heart  of  the  noisy  city, 
where  hung,  some  three  years  ago,  the  original 
painting  from  which  this  engraving  is  a  copy. 
Happening  to  meet  there  at  the  time  a  com- 
pany of  authors  and  poets,  among  whom  were 
Mary  Forest,  Alice  and  Phoebe  Gary,  the  Stod- 
dards,  T.  B.  Aldrich,  and  others,  we  heard  one 
of  the  party  say,  in  speaking  of  the  portrait, 
that  its  aspect  was  that  of  a  beautiful  and  deso- 
late shrine  from  which  the  Genius  had  departed, 
and  that  it  recalled  certain  lines  to  one  of  the 
antique  marbles,  — 

"  O  melancholy  eyes  ! 
O  empty  eyes  !  from  which  the  soul  has  gone 
To  see  the  far-off  countries." 

Near  this  luminous  but  impassive  face,  with 
its  sad  and  soulless  eyes,  was  a  portrait  of  Poe's 
unrelenting  biographist.     In  a  recess  opposite 

hung  a  picture  of   the  fascinating    Mrs.  , 

whose  genius  both  had  so  fervently  admired, 
and  for  whose  coveted  praise  and  friendship 
both  had  been  competitors.  Looking  at  the 
beautiful  portrait  of  this  lady,  —  the  face  so  full 
of  enthusiasm,  and  dreamy,  tropical  sunshine,  — 
remembering  the  eloquent  words  of  her  praise 


EDGAR  FOE  AND   HIS  CRITICS.  1 9 

as  expressed  in  the  prodigal  and  passionate  ex- 
aggerations of  her  verse,  one  ceases  to  wonder 
at  the  rivalries  and  enmities  enkindled  within 
the  hearts  of  those  who  admired  her  genius  and 
her  grace,  —  rivalries  and  enmities  which  the 
grave  itself  could  not  cancel  or  appease. 

Of  the  portrait  prefixed  to  the  "  Illustrated 
Poems,"  recently  published  by  Redfield,  Mr. 
Willis  says,  "The  reader  who  has  the  volume 
in  his  hand  turns  back  musingly  to  look  upon 
the  features  of  the  poet  in  whom  resided  such 
inspiration.  But  though  well  engraved,  and 
useful  as  recalling  his  features  to  those  who 
knew  them  with  the  angel  shining  through,  the 
picture  is  from  a  daguerrotype,  and  gives  no 
idea  of  the  beauty  of  Edgar  Poe.  The  exquis- 
itely chiselled  features,  the  habitual  but  intel- 
lectual melancholy,  the  clear  pallor  of  the 
complexion,  and  the  calm  eye  like  the  molten 
stillness  of  a  slumbering  volcano,  composed  a 
countenance  of  which  this  portrait  is  but  the 
skeleton.  After  reading  '  The  Raven,'  '  Ula- 
lumc,'  '  Lenorc,'  and  'Annabel  Lee,' the  luxu- 
riast  in  poetry  will  better  conceive  what  his 
face  might  have  been." 

It  was  soon  after  his  removal  to  New  York 
that  Mr.  Poe  became  accjuaintcd  with  the 
editors  of  "The  Mirror,"  and  was  employed  by 


20  EDGAR  rOE  AND   HIS  CRITICS. 

them  as  a  writer  for  that  journal.  Mr.  Willis, 
in  a  recent  notice  of  the  "  Illustrated  Poems," 
has  paid  an  eloquent  tribute  to  his  memory, 
expressed  in  a  spirit  of  rare  kindliness  and 
generosity. 

From  March,  1845,  to  January,  1846,  he  was 
associated  with  Mr.  C.  F.  Briggs  in  editing 
"The  Broadway  Journal."  In  the  autumn  of 
1845  he  was  often  seen  at  the  brilliant  literary 
circles  in  Waverley  Place,  where  weekly  re- 
unions of  noted  artists  and  men  of  letters,  at 
the  house  of  an  accomplished  poetess,  attracted 
some  of  the  best  intellectual  society  of  the  city. 
At  the  request  of  his  hostess,  Mr.  Poe  one  even- 
ing electrified  the  gay  company  assembled  there 
by  the  recitation  of  the  weird  poem  to  whose 
sad,  strange  burden  so  many  hearts  have  since 
echoed.  This  was  a  few  weeks  previous  to  the 
publication  of  "The  Raven  "  in  "The  American 
Review."  Mrs.  Browning,  in  a  private  letter 
written  a  few  weeks  after  its  publication  in 
England,  says,  "This  vivid  writing  —  \.\\\% pozvcr 
zv/iich  is  felt — has  produced  a  sensation  here  in 
England.  Some  of  my  friends  are  taken  by  the 
fear  of  it,  and  some  by  the  music.  I  hear  of 
persons  who  are  haunted  by  the  '  Nevermore  ; ' 
and  an  acquaintance  of  mine,  who  has  the  mis- 
fortune of  possessing  a  bust  of  Pallas,  cannot 


EDGAR  POE  AND   HIS  CRITICS.  21 

bear  to  look  at  it  in  the  twilight.  Then  there 
is  a  tale  going  the  rounds  of  the  newspapers 
about  mesmerism,  which  is  throwing  us  all  into 
*  most  admired  disorder,'  dreadful  doubts  as  to 
whether  it  can  be  true,  as  the  children  say  of 
ghost  stories.  The  certain  thing  about  it  is 
the  power  of  the  writer." 

A  woman  of  fine  genius,  who  at  this  time 
made  his  acquaintance,  says,  in  some  recently 
published  comments  on  his  writings,  "  It  was  in 
the  brilliant  circles  that  assembled  in  the  winter 
of  1845-46  at  the  houses  of  Dr.  Dewey,  Miss 
Anna  C.  Lynch,  Mr.  Lawson,  and  others,  that 
we  first  met  Edgar  Poe.  His  manners  were,  at 
these  re-unions,  refined  and  pleasing,  and  his 
style  and  scope  of  conversation  that  of  a  gentle- 
man and  a  scholar.  Whatever  may  have  been 
his  previous  career,  there  was  nothing  in  his 
appearance  or  manner  to  indicate  his  excesses. 
He  delighted  in  the  society  of  superior  women, 
and  had  an  exquisite  perception  of  all  graces  of 
manner,  and  shades  of  expression.  He  was  an 
admiring  listener  and  an  unobtrusive  observer. 
We  all  recollect  the  interest  felt  at  the  time  in 
every  thing  emanating  from  his  pen,  —  the  relief 
it  was  from  the  dulncss  of  ordinary  writers,  the 
certainty  of  something  fresh  and  suggestive. 
His  critiques  were  read  with  avidity  ;  not  that 


22  EDGAR  FOE  AND   HIS  CRITICS. 

he  convinced  the  judgment,  but  that  people  felt 
their  ability  and  their  courage.  Right  or  wrong, 
he  was  terribly  in  earnest."  Like  De  Quincey, 
he  never  supposed  any  thing  :  he  always  knew. 

The  peculiar  character  of  his  intellect  seemed 
without  a  prototype  in  literature.  He  had  more 
than  De  Quincey's  power  of  analysis,  with  a 
constructive  unity  and  completeness  of  which 
the  great  English  essayist  has  given  no  indica- 
tion. His  pre-eminence  in  constructive  and 
analytical  skill  was  beginning  to  be  universally 
admitted,  and  the  fame  and  prestige  of  his 
genius  were  rapidly  increasing.  But  the  dan- 
gerous censorship  he  soon  after  assumed,  as 
the  author  of  a  series  of  sketches,  some  of 
which  have  been  since  published  as  the  "  Lit- 
erati," exposed  him  to  frequent  indignant 
criticism,  while,  by  his  personal  errors  and  in- 
discretions, he  drew  upon  himself  much  social 
censure  and  espionage,  and  became  the  victim 
of  dishonoring  accusations,  from  which  honor 
itself  had  forbidden  him  to  exculpate  himself. 

It  has  been  said,  in  allusion  to  the  severity 
of  his  literary  strictures,  that  a  most  fitting 
escutcheon  for  Mr.  Poe  might  have  been  found 
in  the  crest  of  Walter  Scott's  puissant  Templar, 
Bois  Guilbcrt,  —  a  raven  in  full  flight,  holding  in 
its  claws  a  skull,  and  bearing  the  motto,  "Gare 
le  Corbeau." 


EDGAR  POE  AND  HIS  CRITICS.  23 

Mr.  Longfellow  has  very  generously  said,  in 
a  letter  to  the  editor  of  "The  Literary  Messen- 
ger, "  "  The  harshness  of  his  criticism  I  have 
always  attributed  to  the  irritation  of  a  sensitive 
nature,  chafed  by  some  indefinite  sense  of 
wrong." 

A  recent  and  not  too  lenient  critic  tells  us 
that  "  it  was  his  sensitiveness  to  artistic  imper- 
fections, rather  than  any  malignity  of  feeling, 
that  made  his  criticisms  so  severe,  and  procured 
him  a  host  of  enemies  among  persons  towards 
whom  he  entertained  no  personal  ill  will." 

In  evidence  of  the  habitual  courtesy  and 
good  nature  noticeable  to  all  who  best  knew 
him  in  domestic  and  social  life,  we  remember 
an  incident  that  occurred  at  one  of  the  soirhs 
to  which  we  have  alluded.  A  lady  noted  for 
her  great  lingual  attainments,  wishing  to  apply 
a  wholesome  check  to  the  vanity  of  a  young 
author,  proposed  inviting  him  to  translate  for 
the  company  a  difficult  passage  in  Greek,  of 
which  language  she  knew  him  to  be  profoundly 
ignorant,  although  given  to  a  rather  pretentious 
display  of  Greek  quotations  in  his  published 
writings.  Poe's  earnest  and  persistent  remon- 
strance against  this  piece  of  ijiechanccte  alone 
averted  the  embarrassing  test. 

Sometimes  his  fair  young  wife  was  seen  with 


24  EDGAR  rOE  AND  HIS  CRITICS. 

him  at  these  weekly  assemblages  in  Waverley 
Place.  She  seldom  took  part  in  the  conversa- 
tion ;  but  the  memory  of  her  sweet  and  girlish 
face,  always  animated  and  vivacious,  repels  the 
assertion,  afterwards  so  cruelly  and  recklessly 
made,  that  she  died  a  victim  to  the  neglect  and 
unkindness  of  her  husband,  "who,"  as  it  has 
been  said,  "deliberately  sought  her  death  that 
he  might  embalm  her  memory  in  immortal 
dirges."  An  article  in  "Eraser's  Magazine," 
published  some  two  years  ago,  repeats  the  as- 
sertion that  Poe  was  the  murderer  of  his  wife, 
"  causing  her  to  die  of  starvation  and  a  broken 
heart."  Gilfillan,  ascribing  to  him  "passions 
controlled  by  the  presence  of  art  until  they 
resembled  sculptured  flame,"  tells  us  that  he 
caused  the  death  of  his  wife  that  he  might  have 
a  fitting  theme  for  "The  Raven."  A  serious 
objection  to  this  ingenious  theory  may,  perhaps, 
be  found  in  the  "refractory  fact  "  that  the  poem 
was  published  more  than  a  year  before  the  event 
which  these  persons  assume  it  was  intended  to 
commemorate. 

We  might  cite  the  testimony  alike  of  friends 
and  enemies  to  Poc's  unvarying  kindness  tow- 
ards his  young  wife  and  cousin,  if  other  testi- 
mony were  needed  than  that  of  the  tender  love 
still   cherished  for  his  memory  by  one   whose 


EDGAR  POE  AND   HIS  CRITICS.  25 

life  was  made  doubly  desolate  by  his  death,  — 
the  sister  of  his  father,  and  the  mother  of  his 
Virginia. 

It  is  well  known  to  those  acquainted  with 
the  parties,  that  the  young  wife  of  Edgar  Poe 
died  of  lingering  consumption,  which  manifested 
itself  even  in  her  girlhood.  All  who  have  had 
opportunities  for  observation  in  the  matter  have 
noticed  her  husband's  tender  devotion  to  her 
during  her  prolonged  illnesses.  Even  Dr.  Gris- 
wold  speaks  of  having  visited  him  during  a  pe- 
riod of  illness  caused  by  protracted  anxiety,  and 
watching  by  the  side  of  his  sick  wife.  It  is 
true,  that,  notwithstanding  her  vivacity  and 
cheerfulness  at  the  time  we  have  alluded  to, 
her  health  was  even  then  rapidly  sinking ;  and 
it  was  for  her  dear  sake,  and  for  the  recovery  of 
that  peace  which  had  been  so  fatally  perilled 
amid  the  irritations  and  anxieties  of  his  New- 
York  life,  that  Poe  left  the  city,  and  removed  to 
the  little  Dutch  cottage  in  P^ordham,  where  he 
passed  the  three  remaining  years  of  his  life.  It 
was  to  this  quiet  haven,  in  the  beautiful  spring 
of  1846,  when  the  fruit-trees  were  all  in  bloom 
and  the  grass  in  its  freshest  verdure,  that  he 
brought  his  V^irginia  to  die.  Here  he  watched 
her  failing  breath  in  loneliness  and  privation 
through  many  solitary  moons,  until,  on  a  deso- 


26  EDGAR  FOE  AND  HIS  CRITICS. 

late,  dreary  day  of  the  ensuing  winter,  he  saw 
her  remains  borne  from  beneath  its  lowly  roof 
to  a  neighboring  cemetery.  It  was  towards  the 
close  of  the  year  following  her  death,  his  "  most 
immemorial  year,"  that  he  wrote  the  strange 
threnody  of  "  Ulalume."  This  poem,  perhaps 
the  most  original  and  weirdly  suggestive  of  all 
his  poems,  resembles  at  first  sight  some  of  Tur- 
ner's landscapes,  being  apparently  "  without 
form  and  void,  and  having  darkness  on  the  face 
of  it."  It  is,  nevertheless,  in  its  basis,  although 
not  in  the  precise  correspondence  of  time,  sim- 
ply historical.  Such  was  the  poet's  lonely  mid- 
night walk ;  such,  amid  the  desolate  memories 
and  sceneries  of  the  hour,  was  the  new-born 
hope  enkindled  within  his  heart  at  sight  of  the 
morning  star  — 

"  Astarte's  bediamonded  crescent"  — 

coming  up  as  the  beautiful  harbinger  of  love 
and  happiness  yet  awaiting  him  in  the  untried 
future  ;  and  such  the  sudden  transition  of  feel- 
ing, the  boding  dread,  that  supervened  on  dis- 
covering that  which  had  at  first  been  unnoted, 
—  that  it  shone,  as  if  in  mockery  or  in  warning, 
directly  over  the  sepulchre  of  the  lost  "  Ula- 
lume." A  writer  in  "The  London  Critic,"  after 
quoting    the    opening    stanzas    of    "  Ulalame," 


EDGAR  POE  AND   HIS   CRITICS.  2/ 

says,  "These  to  many  will  appear  only  zuonis. 
But  what  wondrous  words  !  What  a  spell  they 
wield  !  What  a  withered  unity  there  is  in  them  ! 
The  instant  they  are  uttered,  a  misty  picture, 
with  a  tarn  dark  as  a  murderer's  eye  below, 
and  the  thin  yellow  leaves  of  October  fluttering 
above,  —  exponents  of  a  misery  which  scorns  the 
name  of  sorrow,  —  is  hung  up  in  the  chambers 
of  your  soul  forever." 

An  English  writer,  now  living  in  Paris,  the 
author  of  some  valuable  contributions  to  our 
American  periodicals,  passed  several  weeks  at 
the  little  cottage  in  Fordham  in  the  early  au- 
tumn of  1847,  and  described  to  us,  with  a  truly 
English  appreciativeness,  its  unrivalled  neat- 
ness, and  the  quaint  simplicity  of  its  interior  and 
surroundings.  It  was  at  the  time  bordered  by 
a  flower-garden,  whose  clumps  of  rare  dahlias 
and  brilliant  beds  of  fall  flowers  showed,  in  the 
careful  culture  bestowed  upon  them,  the  fine 
floral  taste  of  the  inmates. 

An  American  writer  who  visited  the  cottage 
during  the  summer  of  the  same  year,  described 
it  as  half  buried  in  fruit-trees,  and  having  a 
thick  grove  of  pines  in  its  immediate  neighbor- 
hood. The  proximity  of  the  railroad,  and  the 
increasing  population  of  the  little  village,  have 
since    wrought    great    changes    in    the    place. 


28  EDGAR  FOE  AND  HIS  CRITICS. 

Round  an  old  cherry-tree,  near  the  door,  was  a 
broad  bank  of  greenest  turf.  The  neighboring 
beds  of  mignonette  and  heHotrope,  and  the 
pleasant  shade  above,  made  this  a  favorite  seat. 
Rising  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning  for  a  walk 
to  the  magnificent  Aqueduct  bridge  over  Har- 
lem River,  our  informant  found  the  poet,  with 
his  mother,  standing  on  the  turf  beneath  the 
cherry-tree,  eagerly  watching  the  movements  of 
two  beautiful  birds  that  seemed  contemplating 
a  settlement  in  its  branches.  He  had  some 
rare  tropical  birds  in  cages,  which  he  cherished 
and  petted  with  assiduous  care.  Our  English 
friend  described  him  as  giving  to  his  birds  and 
his  flowers  a  delighted  attention  that  seemed 
quite  inconsistent  with  the  gloomy  and  gro- 
tesque character  of  his  writings.  A  favorite 
cat,  too,  enjoyed  his  friendly  patronage;  and 
often,  when  he  was  engaged  in  composition,  it 
seated  itself  on  his  shoulder,  purring  as  in  com- 
placent approval  of  the  work  proceeding  under 
its  supervision. 

During  Mr.  Poe's  residence  at  Fordham,  a 
walk  to  High  Bridge  was  one  of  his  favorite  and 
habitual  recreations.  The  water  of  the  Aque- 
duct is  conveyed  across  the  river  on  a  range  of 
lofty  granite  arches,  which  rise  to  the  height 
of   a  hundred  and  forty-five  feet   above    high- 


EDGAR  FOE  AND   HIS  CRITICS.  29 

water  level.  On  the  top  a  turfed  and  grassy 
road,  used  only  by  foot-passengers,  and  flanked 
on  either  side  by  a  low  parapet  of  granite, 
makes  one  of  the  finest  promenades  imaginable. 
The  winding  river,  and  the  high,  rocky  shores 
at  the  western  extremity  of  the  bridge,  are  seen 
to  great  advantage  from  this  lofty  avenue.  In 
the  last  melancholy  years  of  his  life — "the 
lonesome  latter  years"  —  Poe  was  accustomed 
to  walk  there  at  all  times  of  the  day  and  night, 
often  pacing  the  then  solitary  pathway  for  hours 
without  meeting  a  human  being.  A  little  to 
the  east  of  the  cottage  rises  a  ledge  of  rocky 
ground,  partly  covered  with  pines  and  cedars, 
commanding  a  fine  view  of  the  surrounding 
country,  and  of  the  picturesque  college  of  St. 
John's,  which  had  at  that  time  in  its  neighbor- 
hood an  avenue  of  venerable  old  trees.  This 
rocky  ledge  was  also  one  of  the  poet's  favorite 
resorts.  Here  through  the  long  summer  days, 
and  through  solitary,  star-lit  nights,  he  loved  to 
sit,  dreaming  his  gorgeous  waking  dreams,  or 
pondering  the  deep  problems  of  "  The  Uni- 
verse,"—  that  grand  "prose  poem"  to  which 
he  devoted  the  last  and  maturest  energies  of  his 
wonderful  intellect.  The  abstracted  enthusi- 
asm with  which  he  pursued  his  great  quest  into 
the  cosmogony  of  the  universe  is  an  earnest  of 


30  EDGAR  FOE   AND   HIS  CRITICS. 

the  passionate  intellectual  sincerity  which  we 
shall  presently  take  occasion  to  illustrate. 

Wanting  in  that  supreme  central  force  or 
faculty  of  the  mind  whose  function  is  a  God- 
conscious  and  God-adoring  faith,  Edgar  Poe 
sought  earnestly  and  conscientiously  for  such 
solutions  of  the  great  problems  of  thought  as 
were  alone  attainable  to  an  intellect  hurled  from 
its  balance  by  the  abnormal  preponderance  of 
the  analytical  and  imaginative  faculties.  It  was 
to  this  very  disproportion  that  we  are  indebted 
for  some  of  those  marvellous  intellectual  crea- 
tions, which,  as  we  shall  hope  to  prove,  had  an 
important  significance,  and  an  especial  adapta- 
tion to  the  time. 

A  very  intolerant  article  on  Mr.  Poe  has 
recently  been  republished  in  this  country  from 
"The  Edinburgh  Review"  for  April,  1858,  in 
which  the  most  injurious  anecdotes  of  Dr.  Gris- 
wold's  memoir  have  been  patiently  copied  and 
italicised,  and  their  enormities  enhanced  by  the 
gratuitous  suppositions  and  assumptions  of  the 
writer. 

As  an  instance  of  the  inconsequent  reasoning 
in  which  the  reviewer  sometimes  indulges,  we 
quote  a  single  passage  from  the  article  in  ques- 
tion. "It  is,"  says  "The  Edinburgh  "  critic,  "a 
curious  example  of  Poe's  superficial  acquaintance 


EDGAR  FOE  AND  HIS  CRITICS.  3 1 

with  the  Hteraturc  of  other  lands,  that,  in  reca- 
pitulating the  titles  of  a  mysterious  library  of 
books  in  'The  House  of  Usher,'  he  quotes,  among 
a  list  of  cabalistical  volumes.  Cresset's  'Vert- 
vert,'  evidently  in  complete  ignorance  of  ivJiat  he  is 
talking  about.  Cresset 's  '  Vcrtvcrt '  is  the  antip- 
odes of  Foe's  ^  Raven,'  though  the  comic  interest 
of  the  former  and  the  tragic  interest  of  the 
latter  turn  alike  on  the  reiteration  of  bird- 
language." 

The  process  of  reasoning  by  which  Mr.  Poe's 
"superficial  acquaintance  with  the  literature  of 
other  lands "  is  deducible  from  the  fact  that 
"Cresset's  'Vertvert'  is  the  antipodes  of  Poe's 
'  Raven,'  "  may  be  very  apparent  to  the  learned 
reviewer,  but  is  certainly  not  quite  clear  to  the 
common  reader. 

We  are  not  aware  that  any  of  the  works  cited 
in  this  catalogue  bear  a  resemblance  to  "  The 
Raven."  Mr.  Poe  must  certainly  be  acquitted 
of  intending  to  suggest  such  a  resemblance, 
since  "  The  Raven  "  was  at  the  time  unwritten. 
"  The  Edinburgh  "  critic,  after  admitting  that 
Poe's  "Raven"  belongs  to  "that  rare  and  re- 
markable class  of  productions  that  suffice,  singly, 
to  make  a  reputation,"  assumes,  oddly  enough, 
that  "the  originality  apparent  in  Mr.  Poe's  writ- 
ings is  due  rather  to  the  deformity  of  his  moral 


32  EDGAR  FOE  AND   HIS  CRITICS. 

character  than  to  the  vigor  or  freshness  of  his 
intellect,"  and,  finding  himself  "  profoundly 
impressed  by  Poe's  wonderful  solutions  of  the 
most  difficult  problems,"  suspects  that  "it  is, 
after  all,  an  easy  thing  for  man  to  solve  the 
riddles  which  he  himself  has  fabricated." 

There  is  a  prevalent  impression  among  critics 
and  readers  who  have  never  felt  the  magnetism 
of  Poe's  weird  imagination,  nor  come  into  full 
rapport  with  his  genius,  that  his  intellectual 
creations  were  always  the  result  of  deliberate 
effort  and  artistic  skill ;  that  they  were  not 
genuine  outgrowths  of  the  inward  life,  but 
arbitrary  creations  of  the  will  and  the  intellect. 

This  opinion,  founded  in  part  upon  the  sub- 
tlety and  refinement  of  his  analytical  faculty, 
has  been  seemingly  guaranteed  by  some  of  his 
own  statements  in  regard  to  his  methods  of 
composition.  A  writer  in  "The  North  Ameri- 
can" characterizes  his  poetry  as  "word-manoeu- 
vring ; "  and  one  of  his  critics,  sitting  at  the 
time  in  "Harper's"  "Easy  Chair,"  says,  "Such 
curious  and  beautiful  performances  as  Poe's 
*  Raven  '  and  '  Sleigh-bells  '  are  not  poems  :  they 
are  simply  ingenious  experiments  upon  the 
sound  of  words."  Were  this  grand  lyric  of 
"The  Bells"  simply  a  lyric  of  "sleigh-bells,"  as 
the  "  Easy  Chair  "  pleasantly  calls  it,  when  were 


EDGAR   POE  AND   HIS  CRITICS.  33 

sleigh-bells  ever  heard  to  ring  so  merrily  before? 
Listen  ! 

"  How  they  tinkle,  tinkle,  tinkle, 
In  the  icy  air  of  night ! 
While  the  stars  that  oversprinkle 
All  the  heavens,  seem  to  twinkle 

With  a  crystalline  delight; 
Keeping  time,  time,  time. 
In  a  sort  of  Runic  rhyme. 
To  the  tintinnabulation  that  so  musically  wells 
From  the  bells,  bells,  bells,  bells, 
Bells,  bells,  bells, — 
From  the  jingling  and  the  tinkling  of  the  bells." 

It  cannot,  indeed,  be  denied  that  the  mere  artis- 
tic treatment  of  this  poem  is  truly  marvellous. 
The  metallic  ring  and  resonance,  —  the  vibration 
and  reverberation  of  the  rhythm,  —  are  such  that 
one  of  its  admirers  says,  "We  can  never  read 
it  without  pausing  after  every  verse  to  let  the 
peals  of  sound  die  away  on  the  *  bosom  of  the 
palpitating  air,'  that  we  may  commence  the  suc- 
ceeding stanza  in  silence."  Another,  who  ap- 
preciates its  ideal  truth  of  conception  not  less 
than  its  high  rhythmical  art,  says,  "  I  was  aston- 
ished one  night,  in  watching  a  conflagration, 
and  repeating,  amid  the  clash  and  clang  of  the 
alarm-bells,  the  third  stanza  of  the  poem,  to 
find  how  marvellously  the  movement  of  the 
verse  timed  with  the  peals  of  sound,  and  how 


34  EDGAR  POE  AND   HIS  CRITICS. 

truly  the  poem  reproduced  the  sense  of  danger 
which  the  sound  of  the  bells,  and  the  glare  and 
mad  ascension  of  the  flames,  and  the  pallor  of 
the  moonlight,  conveyed.  All  the  poetry  of  a 
conflagration  is  in  that  stanza,  both  in  sound 
and  sense ;  and  Dante  himself  could  not  have 
rendered  it  more  truly." 

So  many  faculties  were  brought  into  play  in 
the  expression  of  Poe's  poetical  compositions, 
that  readers  in  whom  the  critical  intellect  pre- 
vails over  the  imaginative,  often  acknowledge 
the  refined  art,  the  tact,  the  subtlety,  the  fault- 
less method,  while  the  potent  viagnetisvi  of  his 
genius  utterly  escapes  them.  There  are  per- 
sons whom  nature  has  made  non-conductors  to 
this  sort  of  electricity. 

The  critic  of  "  The  North  American  "  to 
whose  strictures  we  have  alluded,  charges  him 
with  overlooking  moral  and  spiritual  ideas,  and 
calls  his  works  "  rich  and  elaborate  pieces  of 
art,"  wanting  in  "the  vis  vitca  which  alone  can 
make  of  words  living  things."  Bayne,  on  the 
other  hand,  in  his  fine  essay  on  "  Tennyson  and 
his  Teachers,"  alludes  to  the  "Haunted  Palace" 
of  "the  great  American  poet,"  and  contrasts 
its  wonderfully  spiritual,  subjective,  and  ideal 
character  with  the  rich  and  accurate  detail  of 
Tennyson's  "Palace  of  Art."     He   classes  the 


EDGAR  FOE  AND   HIS  CRITICS.  35 

American  poet  with  those  who  have  scattered 
imaginative  spells,  rather  than  finished  elaborate, 
imaginative  pictures.  A  greater  mistake  in 
Hterary  criticism  could  not  well  be  made  than 
that  which  is  evinced  in  the  frequent  applica- 
tion of  the  word  "sensuous"  to  the  singularly- 
ideal  and  subjective  character  of  Foe's  imagina- 
tive creations.  We  do  not,  of  course,  intend 
to  include  among  these  his  stories  of  a  purely 
inventive  or  grotesque  character. 

It  is  not  to  be  questioned  that  Poe  was  a 
consummate  master  of  language ;  that  he  had 
sounded  all  the  secrets  of  rhythm  ;  that  he  un- 
derstood and  availed  himself  of  all  its  resources, 
—  the  balance  and  poise  of  syllables,  the  alterna- 
tions of  emphasis  and  cadence,  of  vowel-sounds 
and  consonants,  and  all  the  metrical  sweetness 
of  "phrase  and  metaphrase."  Yet  this  con- 
summate art  was  in  him  united  with  a  rare 
simplicity.  He  was  the  most  genuine  of  enthu- 
siasts, as  we  think  we  shall  presently  show. 
His  genius  would  follow  no  leadings  but  those 
of  his  own  imperial  intellect.  With  all  his  vast 
mental  resources,  he  could  never  write  an  occa- 
sional poem,  or  adapt  himself  to  the  taste  of  a 
popular  audience.  His  graver  narratives  and 
fantasies  are  often  related  with  an  earnest 
simplicity,  solemnity,  and  apparent  fidelity,  at- 


2,6  EDGAR  POE  AND   HIS  CRITICS. 

tributable  not  so  much  to  a  deliberate  artistic 
purpose,  as  to  that  power  of  vivid  and  intense 
conception  that  made  his  dreams  reahties,  and 
his  Hfe  a  dream. 

The  strange  fascination  —  the  unmatched 
charm  —  of  his  conversation  consisted  in  its 
gcuniiicncss.  Even  Dr.  Griswold,  who  has 
studiously  represented  him  as  cold,  passionless, 
perfidious,  admits  that  his  conversation  was  at 
times  almost  "supra-mortal  it  its  eloquence;" 
that  "his  large  and  variably  expressive  eyes 
looked  repose  or  shot  fiery  tumult  into  theirs 
who  listened,  while  his  own  face  glowed,  or 
was  changeless  in  pallor,  as  his  imagination 
quickened  his  blood,  or  drew  it  back  frozen  to 
his  heart." 

These  traits  are  not  the  possible  accompani- 
ments of  attributes  which  Dr.  Griswold  has  else- 
wdiere  ascribed  to  him.  As  a  conversationist 
we  do  not  remember  his  equal.  We  have  heard 
the  veteran  Landor  (called  by  high  authority 
the  best  talker  in  England)  discuss  with  scath- 
ing sarcasm  the  popular  writers  of  the  day, 
convey  his  political  animosities  by  fierce  invec- 
tives on  the  "  pretentious  coxcomb  Albert  " 
and  "  the  cunning  knave  Napoleon,"  or  de- 
scribe, in  words  of  strange  depth  and  tender- 
ness, the  peerless  charm  of  goodness,  and  the 


EDGAR   FOE   AND   HIS   CRITICS.  37 

na'ivc,  social  graces  in  the  beautiful  mistress  of 
Gore  House,  "the  most  gorgeous  Lady  Bless- 
ington."  We  have  heard  the  Howadji  talk  of 
the  gardens  of  Damascus  till  the  air  seemed 
purpled  and  perfumed  with  its  roses.  We  have 
listened  to  the  trenchant  and  vivid  talk  of  the 
Autocrat ;  to  the  brilliant  and  exhaustless  collo- 
quial resources  of  John  Neal  and  Margaret 
Fuller.  We  have  heard  the  racy  talk  of  Orestes 
Brownson  in  the  old  days  of  his  freedom  and 
power,  have  listened  to  the  serene  wisdom  of 
Alcott,  and  treasured  up  memorable  sentences 
from  the  golden  lips  of  Emerson.  Unlike  the 
conversational  power  evinced  by  any  of  these, 
was  the  earnest,  opulent,  unpremeditated  speech 
of  Edgar  Foe. 

Like  his  writings,  it  presented  a  combination 
of  qualities  rarely  met  with  in  the  same  person, 
—  a  cool,  decisive  judgment,  a  wholly  unconven- 
tional courtesy  and  sincere  grace  of  manner, 
and  an  imperious  enthusiasm,  which  brought  all 
hearers  within  the  circle  of  its  influence. 

J.  M.  Daniel,  Esq.,  United-States  Minister  at 
Turin,  who  kricw  Foe  well  during  the  last  years 
of  his  life,  says  of  him,  "His  conversation  was 
the  very  best  we  have  ever  listened  to.  We 
have  never  heard  any  so  suggestive  of  thought, 
or  any  from  which  one  gained   so  much.     On 


38  EDGAR  POE  AND   HIS  CRITICS. 

literary  subjects  it  was  the  essence  of  correct 
and  profound  criticism  divested  of  all  formal 
pedantries  and  introductory  ideas,  —  the  kernel 
clear  of  the  shell.  He  was  not  a  brilliant  talker 
in  the  common,  after-dinner  sense  of  the  word ; 
he  was  not  a  maker  of  fine  points,  or  a  frequent 
sayer  of  funny  things.  What  he  said  was 
prompted  entirely  by  the  moment,  and  seemed 
uttered  for  the  pleasure  of  uttering  it.  In  his 
animated  moods  he  talked  with  an  abstracted 
earnestness,  as  if  he  were  dictating  to  an 
amanuensis ;  and,  if  he  spoke  of  individuals,  his 
ideas  ran  upon  their  moral  and  intellectual 
qualities,  rather  than  upon  the  idiosyncrasies  of 
their  active,  visible  phenomena,  or  the  jDCculiari- 
ties  of  their  manner." 

We  have  said  that  the  charm  of  his  conversa- 
tion consisted  in  its  genuineness,  its  wonderful 
directness,  and  sincerity.  We  believe,  too,  that, 
in  the  artistic  utterance  of  poetic  emotion,  he 
was  at  all  times  passionately  genuine.  His 
proud  reserve,  his  profound  melancholy,  his  un- 
worldliness  —  may  we  not  say  his  wicarthlincss 
—  of  nature,  made  his  character  one  very  diffi- 
cult of  comprehension  to  the  casual  observer. 
The  complexity  of  his  intellect,  its  incalculable 
resources,  and  his  masterly  control  of  those  re- 
sources when  brought  into  requisition  for  the 


EDGAR  POE  AND  HIS  CRITICS.  39 

illustration  of  some  favorite  theme  or  cherished 
creation,  led  to  the  current  belief  that  its  action 
was  purely  arbitrary,  that  he  could  write  with- 
out emotion  or  earnestness  at  the  deliberate 
diction  of  the  will.  A  certain  class  of  his 
writings  undeniably  exhibits  the  faculties  of 
ingenuity  and  invention  in  a  prominent  and  dis- 
tinctive light.  But  it  must  not  be  forgotten 
that  there  was  another  phase  of  his  mind,  one 
not  less  distinctive  and  characteristic  of  his 
genius,  which  manifested  itself  in  creations  of 
a  totally  different  order  and  expression.  It  can 
hardly  have  escaped  the  notice  of  the  most  care- 
less reader  that  certain  ideas  exercised  over  him 
the  power  of  fascination.  They  return  again 
and  again  in  his  stories  and  poems,  and  seem 
like  the  utterances  of  a  mind  possessed  with 
thoughts,  emotions,  and  images  of  which  the 
will  and  the  understanding  take  little  cogni- 
zance. In  the  delineation  of  these,  his  language 
often  acquires  a  power  and  pregnancy  eluding 
all  attempts  at  analysis.  It  is  then,  that,  by  a 
few  miraculous  words,  he  evokes  emotional 
states,  or  commands  pictorial  effects,  which  live 
forever  in  the  memory,  and  form  a  part  of  its 
eternal  inheritance.  No  analysis  can  dissect, 
no  criticism  can  disenchant,  them. 

As  specimens  of  the  class  we  have  indicated, 


40  EDGAR  FOE  AND   HIS  CRITICS. 

read  "  Ligeia,"  "  Morella,"  "Eleanora."  Ob- 
serve in  them  the  prevailing  and  dominant 
thoughts  of  his  inner  life,  —  ideas  of  "  fate  and 
metaphysical  aid,"  of  psychical  and  spiritual 
agencies,  energies,  and  potencies.  See  in  them 
intimations  of  mysterious  phenomena,  which, 
at  the  time  when  these  fancies  were  indited, 
were  regarded  as  fables  and  dreams,  but  which 
have  since  (in  their  phenomenal  aspect  simply) 
been  recognized  as  matters  of  popular  experi- 
ence and  scientific  research. 

In  "  Ligeia,"  the  sad  and  stately  symmetry 
of  the  sentences,  their  rhythmical  cadence,  the 
Moresque  sumptuousness  of  imagery  with  which 
the  story  is  invested,  and  the  weird  metemp- 
sychosis which  it  records,  produce  an  effect  on 
the  reader  altogether  peculiar  in  character,  and, 
as  we  think,  quite  inexplicable  without  a  refer- 
ence to  the  supernatural  inspiration  which  seems 
to  pervade  them.  In  the  moods  of  mind  and 
phases  of  passion  which  this  story  represents, 
we  have  no  labored  artistic  effects.  We  look 
into  the  haunted  chambers  of  the  poet's  own 
mind,  and  see,  as  through  a  veil,  the  strange 
experiences  of  his  inner  life  ;  while  in  the  dusk 
magnificence  of  his  imagery  we  have  the  true 
heraldic  blazonry  of  an  imagination  royally 
dowered  and  descended.     In  this,  as  in  all  that 


EDGAR   FOE   AND   HIS   CRITICS.  4 1 

class  of  Stories  we  have  named,  the  author's 
mind  seems  struggling  desperately  and  vainly 
with  the  awful  mystery  of  death. 

In  "Morella,"  as  in  "  Ligeia,"  the  parties  are 
occupied  with  the  same  mystic  philosophies, 
engrossed  in  the  same  recondite  questions  of 
"life  and  death  and  spiritual  unity,"  questions 
of  "  that  identity  which  at  death  is  or  is  not 
lost  forever."  Each  commemorates  a  psychical 
attraction  which  transcends  the  dissolution  of 
the  mortal  body,  and  oversweeps  the  grave  ;  the 
passionate  soul  of  the  departed  transfusing 
itself  through  the  organism  of  another,  to  man- 
ifest its  deathless  love.  Who  docs  not  remem- 
ber, as  a  strain  of  ^Eonian  melody,  the  story 
of  "  Eleanora  "  .''  Who  does  not  lapse  into  a 
dream  as  he  remembers  the  "River  of  Silence" 
and  "The  Valley  of  the  Many-Colored  Grass"  .'' 

In  this  story,  the  purport,  though  less  apparent 
to  the  general  reader,  and  differently  interpreted 
by  a  writer  in  "The  North  American  Review," 
is  still  the  same  as  in  the  preceding.  Read  the 
closing  sentences,  so  eloquent  with  a  tender  and 
mysterious  meaning,  which  record,  after  the 
death  of  the  beloved  Eleanora,  the  appearance, 
"from  a  far,  far  distant  and  unknown  land,"  of 
the  serai)h  Ermengarde.  Observe,  too,  in  these 
closing  lines,  the  indication,  so  often  manifest 


42  EDGAR  rOE   AND   HIS  CRITICS. 

in  Poe's  poems  and  stories,  of  a  lingering  pity 
and  sorrow  for  the  dead,  —  an  ever-recurring 
pang  of  remorse,  in  the  fear  of  having  grieved 
them  by  some  involuntary  wrong  of  desertion 
or  forgetfulness. 

This  haunting  remembrance,  —  this  sad,  re- 
morseful pity  for  the  departed,  —  is  everywhere 
a  distinguishing  feature  in  his  prose  and  poetry. 

The  existence  of  such  a  feeling  as  a  prevalent 
mood  of  his  mind,  of  which  we  have  abundant 
evidence,  is  altogether  incompatible  with  that 
cold  sensualism  with  which  he  has  been  so  igno- 
rantly  charged.  So  far  from  being  selfish  or 
heartless,  his  devotional  fidelity  to  the  memory 
of  those  he  loved  would  by  the  world  be  regard- 
ed as  fanatical.  A  characteristic  incident  of  his 
boyhood  will  illustrate  the  passionate  fidelity 
which  we  have  ascribed  to  him.  While  at  the 
academy  in  Richmond,  which  he  entered  in  his 
twelfth  year,  he  one  day  accompanied  a  school- 
mate to  his   home,  where  he  saw  for  the  first 

time    Mrs.    H S ,   the    mother    of    his 

young  friend.  This  lady,  on  entering  the 
room,  took  his  hand,  and  spoke  some  gentle 
and  gracious  words  of  welcome,  which  so  pene- 
trated the  sensitive  heart  of  the  orphan-boy  as 
to  deprive  him  of  the  power  of  speech,  and  for 
a  time  almost  of  consciousness  itself.     He   re- 


EDGAR   FOE  AND   HIS  CRITICS.  43 

turned  home  in  a  dream,  with  but  one  thought, 
one  hope  in  life,  — to  hear  again  the  sweet  and 
gracious  words  that  had  made  the  desolate  world 
so  beautiful  to  him,  and  filled  his  lonely  heart 
with  the  oppression  of  a  new  joy.  This  lady 
afterwards  became  the  confidante  of  all  his  boy- 
ish sorrows,  and  hers  was  the  one  redeeming 
influence  that  saved  and  guided  him  in  the 
earlier  days  of  his  turbulent  and  passionate 
youth.  After  the  visitation  of  strange  and 
peculiar  sorrows,  she  died  ;  and  for  months  after 
her  decease  it  was  his  habit  to  visit  nightly  the 
cemetery  where  the  object  of  his  boyish  idolatry 
lay  entombed.  The  thought  of  her  sleeping 
there  in  her  loneliness  filled  his  heart  with  a 
profound,  incommunicable  sorrow.  When  the 
nights  were  very  dreary  and  cold,  when  the 
autumnal  rains  fell,  and  the  winds  wailed  mourn- 
fully over  the  graves,  he  lingered  longest,  and 
came  away  most  regretfully. 

It  was  the  image  of  this  lady,  long  and  ten- 
derly and  sorrowfully  cherished,  that  suggested 
the  stanzas,  "To  Helen,"  published  among  the 
poems  written  in  his  youth,  which  Russell 
Lowell  says  have  in  them  a  grace  and  svmme- 
try  of  outline  such  as  few  poets  ever  attain,  and 
which  are  valua]:>le  as  displaying  "what  can 
only  be  expressed  by  the  contradictory  phrase 
cf  innate  cxf^cnciu'cy 


44  EDGAR  POE  AND  HIS  CRITICS. 

As  the  lines  do  not  appear  in  the  latest  edi- 
tions of  his  poems,  we  give  them  here  :  — 

"  Helen,  thy  l)eauty  is  to  me 

Like  those  Nicean  barks  of  yore, 
That  gently,  o'er  a  perfumed  sea, 
The  weary,  wayworn  wanderer  bore 
To  his  own  native  shore. 

"  On  desperate  seas  long  wont  to  roam, 
Thy  hyacinth  hair,  thy  classic  face, 
Thy  Naiad  airs,  have  brought  me  home, 

To  the  glory  that  was  Greece, 
To  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome.  . 

"  Lo  !  in  yon  brilliant  window  niche, 
How  statue-like  I  see  thee  stand. 
The  agate  lamp  within  thy  hand! 
Ah,  Psyche,  from  the  regions  which 
Are  Holy  land  !  " 

In  a  letter  now  before  us,  written  within  a 
twelvemonth  of  his  death,  Edgar  Poe  speaks 
of  the  love  which  inspired  these  verses  as  "  the 
one,  idolatrous,  and  purely  ideal  love  "  of  his 
passionate  boyhood. 

In  one  of  the  numbers  of  "Russell's  Maga- 
zine," there  is  a  transcript  of  the  first  published 
version  of  the  exquisite  poem  entitled  "  Le- 
norc,"  commencing  — 

"Ah,  broken  is  the  golden  bowl!   the  spirit  flown  forever. 
Let  the  bell  toll :  a  saintly  soul  floats  on  the  Stygian 
River." 


EDGAR   FOE   AND   HIS   CRITICS.  45 

It  is  remarkable,  that,  in  this  earlier  version, 
instead  of  Lenore,  we  have  the  name  of  Helen. 
The  lines  were  afterwards  greatly  altered,  and 
improved  in  structure  and  expression  ;  and  the 
name  of  Lenore  was  introduced,  apparently  for 
its  adaptation  to  rhythmical  effect.  Whatever 
may  be  the  meaning  that  underlies  this  strange 
funeral  anthem,  it  will  always  be  admired  for 
the  triumphant  music  of  its  sorrow,  and  for  its 
sombre  pomp  of  words.  We  may  trust  that  the 
"  Sabbath  Song  "  did  indeed 

"  Go  up  to  God  so  solemnly  the  dead  could  feel  no  wrong." 

The  ideas  which  haunted  the  brain  of  the 
young  poet  during  his  watch  in  the  lonely 
churchyard,  the  shapeless  fears  and  phantasms 

"  Flapping  from  out  their  Condor  wings 
Invisible  woe," 

were  the  same  which  overwhelmed  De  Ouincey 
at  the  burial  of  his  sweet  sister  and  playmate, 
as  described  by  him  in  the  "  Suspiria  de  Pro- 
fundis,"  —  ideas  of  terror  and  indescribable  awe 
at  the  thought  of  that  mysterious  waking  sleep, 
that  powerless  and  dim  vitality,  in  which  "  the 
dead  "  are  presumed,  according  to  our  popular 
theology,  to  await  "  the  general  resurrection  at 
the  last  day."     What  wonder  that  the  phantoms 


46  EDGAR  rOR   AND   HIS   CRITICS. 

of  "  Shadow  "  and  "Silence,"  once  evoked  there, 
could  never  be  exorcised  !  What  wonder  that 
"  the  fable  which  the  Demon  told  in  the  shadow 
of  the  tomb  "  haunted  him  forever  ! 

"Now,  there  arc  strange  tales  in  the  volumes 
of  the  Magi,  in  the  iron-bound,  melancholy  vol- 
umes of  the  Magi,  —  glorious  histories  of  the 
heaven,  and  of  the  earth,  and  of  the  mighty 
sea,  and  of  the  genii  that  overruled  the  sea 
and  the  earth  and  the  lofty  heaven  ;  there  was 
much  lore,  too,  in  the  sayings  of  the  Sybils. 
And  holy,  holy  things  were  heard  of  old  by  the 
dim  leaves  that  trembled  around  Dodona.  But, 
as  AllaJi  livctJi,  tJiat  fable  ivJiicJi  the  Demon  told 
vie  as  he  sat  by  viy  side  in  the  shadow  of  the 
tomb,  I  hold  to  be  the  most  zuonderful  of  all ! 
And  as  the  Demon  made  an  end  of  his  story,  he 
fell  back  zvithin  the  eavity  of  the  tomb,  and 
langJied.  And  I  coicld  not  langJi  ivith  the  De- 
mon, and  he  cnrsed  me  because  I  co?ild  not  langJi. 
And  the  lynx  which  dwelleth  forever  in  the 
tomb  came  out,  and  sat  at  the  feet  of  the  De- 
mon, and  looked  him  steadily  in  the  face." 

These  solitary  churchyard  vigils,  with  all 
their  associated  memories,  present  a  key  to 
much  that  seems  strange  and  abnormal  in  the 
poet's  after-life.  Questions  which  no  human 
tongue  could  answer,  no  human  knowledge  sat- 


EDGAR  POE  AND  HIS  CRITICS.  47 

isfy  or  silence,  then  found  an  utterance  in  the 
vast  and  desolate  chambers  of  his  imagination  ; 
and  their  mournful  echoes  are  heard  again  and 
again  in  the  magic  cadences  of  his  verse.  In 
the  "Colloquy  of  Monos  and  Una"  he  has  im- 
agined all  the  phases  of  sentient  life  in  the 
grave  ;  and  in  the  "  Bridal  Ballad  "  are  stanzas, 
which,  as  read  by  the  author,  were  full  of  a  wild, 
sad  pathos  not  easily  forgotten.  We  will  in- 
stance only  two  of  the  stanzas,  although  their 
rhythmical  effect  is  injured  by  their  separation 
from  those  which  precede  and  accompany  them, 

"And  my  lord  he  loves  me  well ; 

But  when  first  he  breathed  his  vow 
The  words  rang  as  a  knell, 
And  the  voice  seemed  his  who  fell 
In  the  battle  down  the  dell, 

And  who  is  happy  now. 


Would  God  I  could  awaken ! 
For  I  dream  I  know  not  how; 

And  my  soul  is  sorely  shaken, 

Lest  an  evil  step  be  taken, — 

Lest  the  dead,  who  is  forsaken, 

May  not  be  happy  now.''' 


The  thought  which  informs  so  many  of  his 
tales  and  poems  betrays  its  sad  sincerity  even 
in   his   critical   writings,   as,  for   instance,  in   a 


48  EDGAR  FOE  AND   HIS  CRITICS. 

notice  of  "  Undine  "  in  the  "  Marginalia."  Yet 
it  has  been  said  of  him  that  "  he  had  no  touch 
of  human  feeling  or  of  human  pity;"  that  "he 
loved  no  one  but  himself;"  that  "he  was  an 
abnormal  and  monstrous  creation,"  "possessed 
by  legions  of  devils."  The  most  injurious 
epithets  have  been  heaped  upon  his  name,  and 
the  most  improbable  and  calumnious  stories 
recorded  as  veritable  histories.  Ten  years  have 
passed  since  his  death ;  and  while  the  popular 
interest  in  his  writings  and  the  popular  estimate 
of  his  genius  increase  from  year  to  year,  these 
acknowledged  calumnies  are  still  going  the 
round  of  the  foreign  periodicals,  and  are  still 
being  republished  at  home. 

We  believe,  that,  with  the  exception  of  Mr. 
Willis's  generous  tributes  to  his  memory,  some 
candid  and  friendly  articles  by  the  editor  of  "  The 
Literary  Messenger,"  and  an  eloquent  and  vig- 
orous article  in  "  Russell's  Magazine  "  by  IVIr. 
J.  Wood  Davidson  of  Columbia,  S.C.  (who  has 
appreciated  his  genius  and  his  sorrow  more 
justly,  perhaps,  than  any  of  his  American  crit- 
ics), this  great  and  acknowledged  wrong  to  the 
dead  has  been  permitted  to  pass  without  public 
rebuke  or  protest. 

In  the  memoir  prefixed  to  the  "Illustrated 
Poems,"  it  is  said  of  him  that  "his  religion  was 


EDGAR   POE  AND   HIS   CRITICS.  49 

a  worship  of  the  beautiful,"  which  is  emphati- 
cally true,  and  that  "  he  knew  no  beauty  but 
that  which  is  purely  senuous,"  which  is  as  em- 
phatically untrue.  We  appeal  from  this  last 
assertion  to  Mr.  Poe's  own  exposition  of  his 
poetic  theory.  He  recognizes  the  elements  of 
poetic  emotion,  the  emotion  of  the  beautiful, 
"  in  all  noble  tJionghts,  in  all  holy  impulses,  in 
all  cJiivalronSy  generous ,  and  self-saa'ijicing 
deeds''  His  "aesthetic  religion,"  which  has 
been  so  strangely  misapprehended,  was  simply 
a  recognition  of  the  divine  and  inseparable  har- 
monies of  the  supremely  Beautiful  and  the 
supremely  Good. 

The  author  of  the  very  able  and  systematic 
critique  in  "The  North  American  Review" 
(which  is,  nevertheless,  essentially  false  in  all 
its  estimates  of  intellectual  and  moral  charac- 
ter) tells  us  that  he  "  repudiated  moral  uses  in 
his  prose  fictions,  as  in  his  poetry,  and  that,  if 
moral  or  spiritual  truths  are  found  in  them,  they 
must  have  got  there  accidentally,  without  the 
author's  permission  or  knowledge."  This  is 
very  unjust.  To  prove  its  injustice,  we  have 
only  once  more  to  quote  the  author's  own  words. 
"  Taste,''  tJie  sense  of  the  beautiful,  ^'  holds  intimate 
relations  zuith  the  intellect  and  the  moral  sense : 
from  the  moral  sense  it  is  separated  by  so  faint 


50  EDGAR  POE   AND  HIS  CRITICS. 

a  difference  that  Aristotle  has  not  hesitated 
to  place  some  of  its  operations  among  the  vir- 
tues themselves."  Again:  "The  poetic  sense 
is  strictly  and  simply  the  human  aspiration  for 
supernal  beauty.  It  is  no  mere  appreciation 
of  the  beauty  before  us,  but  a  wild  effort  to 
reach  the  beauty  above,  —  a  prescience  of  that 
loveliness  whose  very  elements,  perhaps,  apper- 
tain to  Eternity  alone." 

The  current  strictures  on  Poe's  sinful  worship 
of  beauty  remind  us  of  the  satirist  Shoppe  in 
Jean  Paul's  "  Titan,"  who  says,  "  In  one  respect 
we  Germans  are  far  in  advance  of  the  Greeks 
and  Italians.  We  never  seek  the  beautiful 
without  looking  for  collateral  advantages  :  our 
caryatides  must  uphold  pulpits,  and  our  angels 
bear  baptismal  fonts." 

We  are  ready  to  admit,  with  the  severe  critic 
of  "  The  North  American,"  that  a  very  large  pro- 
portion of  Poe's  stories  are  filled  with  monstrous 
and  appalling  images  ;  that  many  of  them  op- 
press the  reader  like  frightful  incubi,  from  whose 
influence  he  vainly  tries  to  escape.  Ruskin 
tells  us,  in  his  treatise  on  the  grotesque,  that 
it  is  the  trembling  of  the  human  soul  in  the 
presence  of  death  which  most  of  all  disturbs 
the  images  on  the  intellectual  mirror,  investing 
them  with  the  grotesque  ghastliness  of  fitful 


EDGAR  rOE  AND  II IS  CRITICS.  5  I 

dreams.  "  If  the  mind  be  not  healthful  and 
serene,  the  wider  the  scope  of  its  glance  and 
the  grander  the  truths  of  which  it  obtains  an 
insight,  the  more  fantastic  and  fearful  are  these 
distorted  images." 

Yet,  as  out  of  mighty  and  terrific  discords 
noblest  harmonies  are  sometimes  evolved,  so 
through  the  purgatorial  ministries  of  awe  and 
terror,  and  through  the  haunting  Nemesis  of 
doubt,  Poe's  restless  and  unappeased  soul  was 
urged  on  to  the  fulfilment  of  its  appointed  work  ; 
groping  out  blindly  towards  the  light,  and  mark- 
ing the  approach  of  great  spiritual  truths  by  the 
very  depth  of  the  shadow  it  projected  against 
them. 

It  would  seem  that  the  true  point  of  view 
from  which  his  genius  should  be  regarded  has 
yet  to  be  sought.  We  are  not  of  those  who 
believe  that  any  order  of  genius  is  revealed  to 
us  in  vain,  nor  do  we  believe  that  the  age  would 
have  gained  any  thing  if  the  author  of  "The 
Raven  "  had  proved  another  Wordsworth  or  an- 
other Longfellow.  These  far-wandering  comets, 
not  less  than  "the  regular,  calm  stars,"  obey 
a  law,  and  follow  a  pathway,  that  has  been 
marked  out  for  them  by  infinite  wisdom  and 
essential  love.  That  the  genius  of  Toe  had 
its  peculiar  mission  and  significance  in  relation 


52  EDGAR  POE  AND  HIS  CTITICS. 

to  the  age,  we  cannot  doubt.  Every  man  of 
electric  temperament  and  prophetic  genius  rep- 
resents, or  rather  anticipates,  with  more  or  less 
of  consciousness  and  direct  volition,  those  latent 
ideas  which  are  about  to  unfold  themselves  in 
humanity.  It  is  thus  that  Midler  accounts  for 
the  origin  of  the  Greek  Mythus,  the  simple 
invention  of  which  he  pronounces  to  be  impos- 
sible if  by  invention  is  meant  a  free  and  delib- 
erate treatment  of  something  known  to  be 
untrue.  He  regards  the  originators  of  the  Greek 
Mythus  merely  as  the  more  passive  recipients 
and  skilful  exponents  who  first  gave  form  and 
expression  to  those  spiritual  ideas  which  were 
tending  to  organic  development  at  that  particu- 
lar stage  of  the  world's  progress,  —  "  the  foci  in 
which  the  scattered  rays  of  spiritual  conscious- 
ness were  concentrating  themselves,  to  be  radi- 
ated forth  with  new  intensity."  When  Poe's 
genius  began  to  unfold  itself,  the  age  was  mov- 
ing feverously  and  restlessly  through  processes 
of  transition  and  development,  which  seemed 
about  to  unsettle  all  things,  yet  gave  no  clear 
indication  of  whither  they  were  leading  us. 

In  our  own  country,  Mr.  Emerson's  assertion 
of  the  transcendental  side  of  the  ever-recurring 
question  between  idealism  and  materialism 
marked  the  re-action  of  intellectual  and  spiritual 


EDGAR  FOE  AND  HIS  CRITICS.  53 

tendencies  against  the  materialism  and  literalism 
of  the  churches.  Through  him  the  fine  idealism 
of  the  German  mystics  penetrated  our  literature 
and  spiritualized  our  philosophies.  His  novel 
statements  of  truth  had  in  them  a  strange  force 
and  directness,  startling  the  sleepers  like  the 
naive  cadences  of  a  child's  voice  heard  amid 
the  falsetto  tones  of  the  conventicle  or  the 
theatre.  What  a  sovran  grace  of  sincerity  in 
his  chapter  on  Experience !  What  noble  ethics 
in  his  statement  of  spiritual  laws.  Yet  if  we 
turn  to  the  pages  of  Emerson,  and  look  for  the 
evidences  of  his  belief  in  the  soul's  individual 
immortality,  we  shall  find  that  the  words  he  has 
uttered  on  the  subject  express  for  the  most 
part  either  a  purely  Oriental  indifference,  or  an 
aimless  and  anxious  questioning.  In  his  lecture 
to  the  divinity  students  of  Cambridge,  protest- 
ing against  the  formalism  and  famine  of  the 
churches,  he  told  them  that  the  faith  of  the 
Puritans  was  dying  out,  and  none  arising  in  its 
stead  ;  that  the  eye  of  youth  was  not  lighted  by 
the  hope  of  other  worlds ;  that  literature  had 
become  frivolous,  and  science  cold.  In  his  lec- 
ture on  "The  Times,"  he  says,  "We  drift  like 
white  sail  across  the  wide  ocean,  now  bright  on 
the  wave,  now  darkling  in  the  trough  of  the  sea. 
Ikit  from  what  port  did  we  sail  .-^     Who  knows } 


54  EDGAR  POE  AND  HIS  CRITICS. 

Or  to  what  port  are  we  bound  ?  Who  knows  ? 
There  is  no  one  to  tell  us,  but  such  poor,  weath- 
er-tossed mariners  as  ourselves,  whom  we  speak 
as  we  pass,  or  who  have  hoisted  some  signal 
from  afar,  or  floated  to  us  some  letter  in  a  bot- 
tle. But  what  know  they  more  than  we  ?  "  In 
another  of  his  essays  he  says,  "  I  cannot  tell  if 
these  wonderful  qualities  which  now  house  to- 
gether in  this  mortal  frame  shall  ever  re-assem- 
ble in  equal  activity  in  a  similar  frame  ;  but  this 
one  thing  I  know,  that  the  law  which  clothes 
us  with  humanity  remains  new.  We  are  im- 
mortal with  the  immortality  of  this  law." 

These  expressions  indicate  the  pervading 
scepticism  of  the  time.  Coming  as  they  do 
from  a  man  who  had  been  educated  as  a  clergy- 
man, a  man  for  whose  large  culture  and  liberal 
faith  in  humanity  the  pulpits  of  the  existing 
church  seemed  to  offer  no  sufficient  platform, 
they  have  an  emphasis  which  no  added  word 
could  heighten. 

The  negation  of  Carlyle,  and  the  boundless 
affirmation  of  Emerson,  served  but  to  stimulate 
without  satisfying  the  intellect.  The  liberal 
ethics  of  Fourier,  with  his  elaborate  social  econo- 
mies, and  systems  of  petrified  harmony,  were 
leading  his  disciples  through  forlorn  enterprises 
to  hopeless  failures.     A  "divine  dissatisfaction  " 


EDGAR  FOE  AND  HIS  CRITICS.  55 

was  everywhere  apparent.  De  Quincey  saw 
something  fearful  and  portentous  in  the  vast 
accessions  to  man's  physical  resources  that 
marked  the  time,  unaccompanied  by  any  im- 
provement in  psychical  and  spiritual  knowledge. 
Goethe  had  made  his  great  dramatic  poem  an 
expression  of  the  soul's  craving  for  a  knowl- 
edge of  spiritual  existences  :  — 

"  O  giebt  es  geister  in  der  luft 
Die  zwischen  Erd'  und  Himmel  weben, 
So  steiget  nieder  aus  den  golden  duft, 
Und  furht  mich  weg  zu  neuem  bunten  leben." 

Wordsworth,  in  his  finest  imaginative  poem, 
"  Laodamia,"  represents  and  half  reproves  this 
longing ;  Byron  iterates  it  with  a  proud  and 
passionate  vehemence  in  "Manfred;"  Shelley's 
sad  heart  of  unbelief,  finding  refuge  in  a  despair 
too  deep  for  aspiration,  stands  apart,  as  Eliza- 
beth Browning  has  so  finely  sculptured  him,  — 

"  In  his  white  ideal 
All  statue-blind ; " 

while  Keats  lies  sleeping,  like  his  own  "  En- 
dymion,"  lost  in  dreams  of  the  "dead  past." 
Then,  sadder,  and  lonelier,  and  more  unbeliev- 
ing than  any  of  these,  Edgar  Poe  came  to  sound 
the  very  depths  of  the  abyss.  The  unrest  and 
faithlessness  of    the   aire    culminated    in    him. 


$6  EDGAR  POE  AND  HIS  CRITICS. 

Nothing  so  solitary,  nothing  so  hopeless,  noth- 
ing so  desolate,  as  his  spirit  in  its  darker  moods, 
has  been  instanced  in  the  literary  history  of  the 
nineteenth  century. 

It  has  been  said  that  his  theory,  as  expressed 
in  "  Eureka,"  of  the  universal  diffusion  of  Deity 
in  and  through  all  things,  is  identical  with  the 
Brahmin  ical  faith  as  expressed  in  the  Bagvat 
Gita.  But  those  who  will  patiently  follow  the 
vast  reaches  of  his  thought  in  this  sublime  poem 
of  "The  Universe"  will  find  that  he  arrives  at 
a  form  of  unbelief  far  more  appalling  than  that 
expressed  in  the  gloomy  pantheism  of  India, 
since  it  assumes  that  the  central,  creative  soul 
is  alternately  not  diffused  only,  but  merged  and 
lost,  in  the  universe,  and  the  universe  in  it,  —  "a 
new  universe  swelling  into  existence,  or  sub- 
siding into  nothingness,  at  every  throb  of  the 
heart  divine."  The  creative  energy,  therefore, 
"  lunv  exists  solely  in  the  diffused  matter  and 
spirit  of  the  existing  universe."  The  author 
assumes,  moreover,  that  each  individual  soul 
retains  in  its  youth  a  dim  consciousness  of  vast 
dooms  and  destinies  far  distant  in  the  bygone 
time,  and  infinitely  awful,  from  which  inherent 
consciousness  the  conventional  "world-reason  " 
at  last  awakens  it  as  from  a  dream.  "  It  says 
you  live,  and  the  time  was  when  you  lived  not. 


EDGAR  rOE  AND  HIS  CRITICS.  S7 

You  have  been  created.  An  Intelligence  exists 
greater  than  your  own,  and  it  is  only  through 
this  Intelligence  that  you  live  at  all."  "These 
things,"  he  says,  "  wc  sti'iiggle  to  coviprchciid, 
and  cannot,  —  cannot,  because,  being  untrue,  they 
are  of  necessity  incomprehensible. 

"No  thinking  man  lives  who  at  some  lumi- 
nous point  of  his  life  has  not  felt  himself  lost 
amid  the  surges  of  futile  efforts  at  understand- 
ing or  believing  that  any  thing  exists  greater 
than  his  ozun  sonl.  The  intense,  overwhelming 
dissatisfaction  and  rebellion  at  the  thought, 
together  with  the  omniprevalent  aspirations  at 
perfection,  are  but  the  spiritual,  coincident  with 
the  material,  struggles  towards  the  original 
unity.  The  material  and  spiritual  God  noiu 
exists  solely  in  the  diffused  matter  and  spirit 
of  the  universe,  and  the  regathering  of  this 
diffused  matter  and  spirit  will  be  but  the  recon- 
stitution  of  the  purely  spiritual  and  individual 
God." 

In  a  copy  of  the  original  edition  of  "  Eureka," 
purchased  at  the  recent  sale  of  Dr.  Griswold's 
library,  the  following  note  was  found  inscribed, 
in  the  handwriting  of  the  author,  on  the  half- 
blank  page  at  the  end  of  the  volume.  It  is 
singularly  ingenious  and  characteristic. 


58  EDGAR  POE  AND   HIS  CRITICS. 

'■'■Note.  —  The  pain  of  the  consideration  that  we  shall 
lose  our  individual  identity,  ceases  at  once  when  we  fur- 
ther reflect  that  the  process,  as  above  described,  is  neither 
more  nor  less  than  that  of  the  absorption,  by  each  indi- 
vidual intelligence,  of  all  other  intelligences  (that  is,  of 
the  universe)  into  its  own.  That  God  may  be  all  in  all, 
each  must  become  God." 

This  proud  self-assertion  betrays  a  mysterious 
isolation  from  the  "heart  divine,"  which  fills 
us  with  sadness  and  awe. 

We  confess  to  a  half-faith  in  the  old  supersti- 
tion of  the  significance  of  anagrams,  when  we 
find,  in  the  transposed  letters  of  Edgar  Poe's 
name,  the  words  "  a  God-peer  ;  "  words  which, 
taken  in  connection  with  his  daring  speculations, 
seem  to  have  in  them  a  mocking  and  malign 
import  "which  is  not  man's  nor  angel's." 

Yet,  while  the  author  of  "Eureka,"  like  Lu- 
cretius, — 

"dropped  his  plummet  down  the  broad, 

Deep  universe,  and  found  no  God," 

his  works  are,  as  if  unconsciously,  filled  with  an 
overwhelming  sense  of  the  power  and  majesty 
of  Deity :  they  are  even  dark  with  reverential 
awe.  His  proud  intellectual  assumption  of  the 
supremacy  of  the  individual  soul  ivas  but  an 
expression  of  its  iniperions  longings  for  ininior- 
tality,  and  its  recoil  from  the  Iiannting  phantasms 


EDGAR  POE  AND  HIS  CRITICS.  59 

of  death  and  aiiniliilation ;  while  the  theme  of 
all  his  more  imaginative  writings  is,  as  we  have 
said,  a  love  that  survives  the  dissolution  of  the 
mortal  body,  and  oversweeps  the  grave.  His 
mental  and  temperamental  idiosyncrasies  fitted 
him  to  come  readily  into  rapport  with  psychical 
and  spiritual  influences.  Many  of  his  strange 
narratives  had  a  degree  of  truth  in  them  which 
he  was  unwilling  to  avow.  In  one  of  this  class 
he  makes  the  narrator  say,  "  I  cannot  even  now 
regard  these  experiences  as  a  dream,  yet  it  is 
difficult  to  say  how  otherwise  they  should  be 
termed.  Let  us  suppose  only  that  the  soul  of  man 
to-day  is  on  the  brink  of  stupendous  psychical  dis- 
coveties." 

Dante  tells  us  that 

"Minds  dreaming  near  the  dawn 
Are  of  the  truth  presageful." 

Edgar  Poe's  dreams  were  assuredly  often  pre- 
sageful and  significant ;  and  while  he  but  dimly 
apprehended,  through  the  higher  reason,  the 
truths  which  they  foreshadowed,  he  riveted 
public  attention  upon  them  by  the  strange  fas- 
cination of  his  style,  the  fine  analytical  temper 
of  his  intellect,  and,  above  all,  by  the  weird 
splendors  of  his  imagination  ;  compelling  men 
to   read,   and   to   accredit   as  possible  truths,  his 


6o  EDGAR  FOE  AND  HIS  CRITICS. 

marvellous  conceptions.  He  often  spoke  of  the 
imageries  and  incidents  of  his  inner  life  as  more 
vivid  and  veritable  than  those  of  his  outer  ex- 
perience. We  find  in  some  pencilled  notes 
appended  to  a  manuscript  copy  of  one  of  his 
later  poems,  the  words,  "  All  that  I  have  here 
expressed  was  actually  present  to  me.  Re- 
member the  mental  condition  which  gave  rise 
to  '  Ligeia,'  recall  the  passage  of  which  I 
spoke,  and  observe  the  coincidence."  With  all 
the  fine  alchemy  of  his  subtle  intellect,  he 
sought  to  analyze  the  character  and  conditions 
of  this  introverted  life.  "  I  regard  these  vis- 
ions," he  says,  "even  as  they  arise,  with  an  awe 
which  in  some  measure  moderates  or  tranquil- 
lizes the  ecstasy :  I  so  regard  them  through  a 
conviction  that  this  ecstasy  in  itself  is  of 
a  character  supernal  to  the  human  nature,  —  is  a 
glimpse  of  the  spirit's  outer  zvorld."  He  had 
that  constitutional  determination  to  reverie, 
which,  according  to  De  Ouincey,  alone  enables 
a  man  to  dream  magnificently,  and  which,  as 
we  have  said,  made  his  dreams  realities,  and  his 
life  a  dream.  His  mind  was  indeed  a  "  Haunted 
Palace,"  echoing  to  the  footfalls  of  angels  and 
demons.  "No  man,"  he  says,  "has  recorded, 
no  man  has  dared  to  record,  the  wonders  of  his 
inner  life." 


EDGAR  POE  AND  HIS  CRITICS.  6 1 

Is  there,  then,  no  significance  in  this  "  super- 
natural soliciting"  ?  Is  there  no  evidence  of  a 
wise  purpose,  an  epochal  fitness,  in  the  appear- 
ance, at  this  precise  era,  of  a  mind  so  rarely 
gifted,  and  accessible,  from  peculiarities  of  psy- 
chical and  physical  organization,  to  the  subtle 
vibrations  of  an  ethereal  medium  conveying  but 
feeble  impressions  to  the  senses  of  ordinary 
persons;  a  mind  which,  "following  darkness 
like  a  dream,"  wandered  forever  with  insatiate 
•curiosity  on  the  confines  of  that 

"  Wild,  weird  clime,  that  lieth  sublime 
Out  of  space,  out  of  time, 
By  each  spot  the  most  unholy. 
In  each  nook  most  melancholy," 

seeking  to  solve  the  problem  of  that  phantasmal 
shadow-land,  which,  through  a  class  of  phe- 
nomena unprecedented  in  the  world's  history, 
was  about  to  attest  itself  as  an  actual  plane  of 
conscious  and  progressive  life,  the  mode  and 
measure  of  whose  relations  with  our  own  arc 
already  recognized  as  legitimate  objects  of 
scientific  research  by  the  most  candid  and  com- 
petent thinkers  of  our  time  ?  We  assume,  that, 
in  the  abnormal  manifestations  of  a  genius  so 
imperative  and  so  controlling,  this  epochal  sig- 
nificance   is   most    strikingly   apparent.      Jean 


62  EDGAR   POE  AND  H/S  CRITICS. 

Paul  says  truly  that  "there  is  more  poetic  fitness, 
more  method,  a  more  intelligible  purpose,  in  the 
biographies  which  God  Almighty  writes,  than 
in  all  the  inventions  of  poets  and  novelists." 

The  peculiarities  of  Edgar  Poe's  organization 
and  temperament  doubtless  exposed  him  to 
peculiar  infirmities.  We  need  not  discuss  them 
here.  They  have  been  already  too  elaborately 
and  painfully  illustrated  elsewhere  to  need  fur- 
ther comment.  How  fearfully  he  expiated  them, 
only  those  who  best  knew  and  loved  him  can 
ever  know.  We  are  told  that  ideas  of  right  and 
wrong  are  wholly  ignored  by  him  ;  that  "  no 
recognitions  of  conscience  or  remorse  are  to  be 
found  on  his  pages."  If  not  there,  where,  then, 
shall  we  look  for  them  }  In  "  William  Wilson," 
in  "The  Man  of  the  Crowd,"  and  in  "The  Tell- 
Tale  Heart,"  the  retributions  of  conscience  are 
portrayed  with  a  terrible  fidelity.  In  yet  another 
of  his  stories,  which  we  will  not  name,  the  fear- 
ful fatality  of  crime,  the  dreadful  fascination 
consequent  on  the  indulgence  of  a  perverse  will, 
is  portrayed  with  a  relentless  and  awful  reality. 
May  none  ever  read  it  who  do  not  need  the 
fearful  lesson  which  it  brands  on  the  memory 
in  characters  of  fire !  In  the  relation  of  this 
remarkable  story,  we  recognize  the  power  of  a 
genius  like  that  which  sustains  us  in  traversing 


EDGAR  POE  AND  HIS  CRITICS.  63 

the  lowest  depths  of  Dante's  "  Inferno."  The 
rapid  descent  in  crime  which  it  dehneates,  and 
which  becomes  at  last  involuntary,  reminds  us 
of  the  subterranean  staircase  by  which  Vathek 
and  Nouronihar  reached  the  Hall  of  Eblis, 
where,  as  they  descended,  they  felt  their  steps 
frightfully  accelerated,  till  they  seemed  falling 
from  a  precipice. 

Poe's  private  letters  to  his  friends  offer  abun- 
dant evidence  that  he  was  not  insensible  to  the 
keenest  pangs  of  remorse.  Again  and  again 
did  he  say  to  the  demon  that  tracked  his  path, 
"  Anathema  Maranatha  !  "  but  again  and  again 
did  it  return  to  torture  and  subdue.  He  saw 
the  handwriting  on  the  wall,  but  had  no  power 
to  avert  the  impending  doom. 

In  relation  to  this,  the  fatal  temptation  of  his 
life,  he  says,  in  a  letter  written  within  a  year  of 
his  death,  "  The  agonies  which  I  have  lately 
endured  have  passed  my  soul  through  fire : 
henceforth  I  am  strong.  This  those  who  love 
me  shall  know,  as  well  as  those  who  have  so 
relentlessly  sought  to  ruin  me.  ...  I  have  abso- 
lutely no  pleasure  in  the  stimulants  in  which  I 
sometimes  so  madly  indulge.  It  has  not  been 
in  the  pursuit  of  pleasure  that  I  have  perilled 
life  and  reputation  and  reason  :  it  has  been  in 
the  desperate  attempt  to  escape  from  torturing 


64  EDGAR  POE  AND   HIS  CRITICS. 

memories, — memories  of  wrong  and  injustice 
and  imputed  dishonor, — from  a  sense  of  insup- 
portable loneliness,  and  a  dread  of  some  strange 
impending  doom."  We  believe  these  state- 
ments to  have  been  sincerely  uttered  ;  and  we 
would  record  here  the  testimony  of  a  gentleman, 
who  having  for  years  known  him  intimately, 
and  having  been  near  him  in  his  states  of  utter 
mental  desolation  and  insanity,  assured  us  that 
he  had  never  heard  from  his  lips  a  word  that 
would  have  disgraced  his  heart  or  brought 
reproach  upon  his  honor. 

Could  we  believe  that  any  plea  we  may  have 
urged  in  extenuation  of  Edgar  Poe's  infirmities 
and  errors  would  make  the  fatal  path  he  trod 
less  abhorrent  to  others,  such  would  never 
have  been  proffered.  No  human  sympathy,  no 
human  charity,  could  avert  the  penalties  of  that 
erring  life.  One  clear  glance  into  its  mournful 
corridors,  its  "halls  of  tragedy  and  chambers 
of  retribution,"  would  appall  the  boldest  heart. 

Theodore  Parker  has  nobly  said  that  "every 
man  of  genius  has  to  hew  out  for  himself,  from 
the  hard  marbles  of  life,  the  white  statue  of 
tranquillity."  Those  who  have  best  succeeded 
in  this  sublime  work  will  best  know  how  to 
look  with  pity  and  reverent  awe  upon  the  mel- 
ancholy   torso   which    alone    remains    to    us    of 


EDGAR  POE  AND   HIS   CRITICS.  65 

Edgar  Poe's  misguided  efforts  to  achieve  that 
beautiful  and  august  statue  of  peace. 


Those  who  are  curious  in  tracing  the  effects 
of  country  and  lineage  in  the  mental  and  con- 
stitutional peculiarities  of  men  of  genius,  may 
be  interested  in  such  facts  as  we  have  been 
enabled  to  gather  in  relation  to  the  ancestry  of 
the  poet.  The  awakening  interest  in  genea- 
logical researches  will  make  them  acceptable  to 
many  readers  ;  and  in  their  possible  influence 
on  a  character  so  anomalous  as  that  of  Edgar 
Poe,  they  are  certainly  worthy  of  note. 

John  Poe,  the  great-grandfather  of  Edgar 
Poe,  left  Ireland  for  America  about  the  middle 
of  the  last  century.  He  was  of  the  old  Norman 
family  of  Le  Poer,  a  name  conspicuous  in  Irish 
annals.  Sir  Roger  le  Poer  went  to  Ireland,  as 
marshal  to  Prince  John,  in  the  reign  of  Henry 
II.,  and  became  there  the  founder  of  a  race 
connected  with  some  of  the  most  romantic 
and  chivalrous  incidents  of  Irish  history.  The 
heroic  daring  of  Arnold  le  Poer,  seneschal  of 
Kilkenny  Castle,  who  interposed,  at  the  ulti- 
mate sacrifice  of  his  liberty  and  his  life,  to  save 
a  noble  lady  from  an  ecclesiastical  trial  for 
witchcraft,  the  first  ever  instituted  in  the  king- 


66  EDGAR  POE  AND  HIS  CRITICS. 

dom,  was  chronicled  by  Geraldus  Cambrensis, 
and  has  been  commemorated  by  recent  his- 
torians. 

A  transcript  of  the  story,  as  told  by  Geraldus, 
may  be  found  in  "  Ennemoser's  Magic  "  and  in 
"  White's  History  of  Sorcery."  The  bitter 
feuds  and  troubled  fortunes  of  the  Anglo-Nor- 
man settlers  in  Ireland  are  well  illustrated  in  a 
recent  genealogical  history  of  the  Geraldines  by 
the  Marquis  of  Kildarc,  noticed  in  "  The  Edin- 
burgh Quarterly"  for  October,  1858.  The  dis- 
astrous civil  war  of  1327,  in  which  all  the  great 
barons  of  the  country  were  involved,  was  occa- 
sioned by  a  personal  feud  between  Arnold  le 
Poer  and  Maurice  of  Desmond,  the  former  hav- 
ing offended  the  dignity  of  the  Desmond  by 
calling  him  a  rhymer. 

The  characteristics  of  the  Le  Poers  were 
marked  and  distinctive.  They  were  improvi- 
dent, adventurous,  and  recklessly  brave.  They 
were  deeply  involved  in  the  Irish  troubles  of 
1641  ;  and  when  Cromwell  invaded  Ireland,  he 
pursued  them  with  a  special  and  relentless  ani- 
mosity. Their  families  were  dispersed,  their 
estates  ravaged,  and  their  lands  forfeited.  Of 
the  three  leading  branches  of  the  family  at  the 
time  of  Cromwell's  invasion,  Kilmaedon,  Don 
Isle,  and  Curraghmore,  the    last   only  escaped 


EDGAR  FOE   AND  HIS  CRITICS.  67 

his  vengeance.  The  present  representative  of 
Curraghmore  is  the  Marquis  of  Waterford. 
Cromwell's  siege  of  the  sea-girt  castle  and  for- 
tress of  Don  Isle,  which  was  heroically  de- 
fended by  a  female  descendant  of  Nicholas  le 
Poer,  baron  of  Don  Isle,  is,  as  represented  by 
Sir  Bernard  Burke  in  his  "  Romance  of  the 
Aristocracy,"  full  of  legendary  interest.  The 
beautiful  domain  of  Powerscourt  took  its  name 
from  the  Le  Poers,  and  was  for  centuries  in  the 
possession  of  the  family.  Lady  Blessington, 
through  her  father,  Edmund  Power,  claimed 
descent  from  the  same  old  Norman  family.  The 
fact  is  not  mentioned  in  Madden's  memoir  of 
the  countess,  but  is  stated  in  a  notice  of  her 
death  published  in  "  The  London  Illustrated 
News"  for  June  9,  1849.  The  family  of  the 
Le  Poers,  like  that  of  the  Geraldines  and  other 
Anglo-Norman  settlers  in  Ireland,  passed  from 
Italy  into  the  north  of  France,  and  from  France 
through  England  and  Wales  into  Ireland,  where, 
from  their  isolated  position  and  other  causes, 
they  retained  for  a  long  period  their  hereditary 
traits  with  far  less  modification  from  intermar- 
riage and  consociation  with  other  races  than 
did  their  English  compeers.  Meantime  the 
name  underwent  various  changes  in  accent  and 
orthography.     A   few  branches    of   the   family 


68  EDGAR  FOE  AND  HIS  CRITICS. 

still  bore  in  Ireland  the  old  Italian  name  of  De 
la  Poe. 

John  Poe,  the  great-grandfather  of  Edgar 
Poe,  married  a  daughter  of  Admiral  McBride, 
distinguished  for  his  naval  achievements,  and 
connected  with  some  of  the  most  illustrious  fami- 
lies of  England.  From  genealogical  records 
transmitted  by  him  to  his  son  David  Poe,  the 
grandfather  of  the  poet,  who  was  but  two  years 
of  age  when  his  parents  left  Ireland,  it  appears 
that  different  modes  of  spelling  the  name  were 
adopted  by  different  members  of  the  same  family. 
David  Poe  was  accustomed  to  speak  of  the 
Chevalier  Le  Poer,  a  friend  of  the  Marquis  de 
Grammont,  as  having  been  of  his  father's  family. 
The  grandfather  of  Edgar  Poe  was  an  officer  in 
the  Maryland  line  during  the  war  of  the  Revo- 
lution, and,  as  Dr.  Griswold  has  told  us,  the 
intimate  friend  of  Lafayette.  He  married  a 
lady  of  Pennsylvania  by  the  name  of  Cairnes, 
who  is  still  remembered  as  having  been  a  woman 
of  singular  beauty.  The  father  of  Edgar  Poe, 
while  a  law-student  in  the  office  of  William 
Gwynn,  Esq.,  of  Baltimore,  married,  at  the  age 
of  eighteen,  Elizabeth  Arnold,  a  young  English 
actress,  who  was  herself  but  a  child.  He  first 
saw  her  at  Norfolk,  where  he  was  sent  on  profes- 
sional business ;  and  in  a  few  months  they  were 


EDGAR  FOE  AND  HIS  CRITICS.  69 

married.  Indignant  at  so  imprudent  a  union,  his 
parents  refused  their  countenance  to  the  mar- 
riage ;  and  it  was  only  after  the  birth  of  a  child 
that  he  was  forgiven,  and  received  back  into  the 
paternal  mansion.  During  the  period  of  his 
estrangement  from  his  family  he  had  joined  his 
wife  in  a  theatrical  engagement.  Edgar  Poe 
was  the  offspring  of  this  romantic  and  improvi- 
dent union. 


Having  recorded  our  earnest  protest  against 
the  misapprehension  of  his  critics  and  the  mis- 
statements of  his  biographists,  we  leave  the 
subject  for  the  present,  in  the  belief  that  a 
more  impartial  memoir  of  the  poet  will  yet  be 
given  to  the  world,  and  the  story  of  his  sad, 
strange  life,  when  contemplated  from  a  new 
point  of  view,  be  found  —  like  the  shield  of 
bronze  whose  color  was  so  long  contested  by 
the  knights  of  fable —  to  present  at  least  a 
silver  lining. 


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